Ancient Tokyo’s street vendors, the botefuri, were an unmissable aspect of daily life in the Edo period, whose legacy lives on in modern pockets of Japanese culture.

In the 17th century, the capital of the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo (present-day Tokyo), established itself as one of the largest cities in the world, a bustling space where more than a million inhabitants lived to the rhythm of a dense, noisy, and abundant daily life. In this urban landscape saturated with the smells of fish, burnt wood, and damp tatami mats, a unique music resonated every day–that of the botefuri, the street vendors who roamed the streets, loudly announcing their wares. Their call became a sonic signature, immediately recognizable to the residents of a given neighborhood.

The term botefuri literally refers to peddlers who wave (furu) their sticks (bo) or baskets to signal their presence, while also making their yobi-goe, the chanted or sung calls that serve as a veritable form of vocal advertising. Their repertoire ranges from food to fabrics, tools, and small services. Hokusai and Hiroshige's prints, which depict these figures bent over their wares, immortalize the familiar presence of botefuri in the city’s fabric, alongside bridges and shrines.

Embellished by a popular aesthetic, their carefully modulated voices seek to seduce the ear as much as the stomach. Some of these cries become so emblematic that they have entered urban folklore, passed down like refrains from generation to generation. They contribute to the staging of everyday life, transforming the streets of Edo into an open-air theater, where vendors, passersby, artisans, and curious children mingle.

Today, while Japanese streets echo more with pre-recorded announcements and supermarket jingles than with human voices, botefuri continue to embody a unique cultural heritage of a society where commercial exchange was rooted in a total sensory experience, combining voice, gesture, and object. Their memory still survives through sweet potato (yaki-imo) vendors, street fish and ramen trucks, but also thanks to researchers and sound museums that strive to preserve this fragile and ephemeral art.

Voices, Streets, and Goods

At the end of the Edo period (1603-1868), the capital was a thriving urban world, rivaling the major cities of China and Europe. This population density generated considerable demand for basic necessities, but also for entertainment and everyday objects. It was in this context that the botefuri flourished.

From the mid-17th century, the activity of the botefuri was regulated by the Tokugawa shogunate. In 1659, licenses were issued to control the profession and generate taxes. There were then nearly 5,900 official vendors in the city of Edo alone, not counting the illegal ones, who were probably even more numerous. Licenses were granted primarily to vulnerable people such as children, the elderly, the disabled, or victims of frequent fires, offering them a minimum income, an openness incorporating both social and economic rationales. The flexibility of the botefuri trade quickly attracted city dwellers of all ages, drawn by the lack of corporate constraints and easy access to gainful employment.

The botefuri sell almost everything. Foodstuffs dominate: fresh fish (ayu, bonito, salmon), seasonal vegetables (bamboo shoots, eggplant, shiitake and matsutake mushrooms), fruit (grapes, mandarin oranges), tofu, noodles, and grilled sweet potatoes in winter. But their inventory extends far beyond this, including tableware, brooms, ash for tending fires, scrap paper, mosquito nets, and even insects for breeding or simply for the pleasure of observing them.

The Morisada Manko, a 19th-century encyclopedic manuscript devoted to urban life, lists nearly 90 illustrations of these street vendors. They include portraits of fishmongers, vegetable and shell vendors, and artisans selling carved sweets (amezaiku). These drawings, accompanied by detailed descriptions, demonstrate both the variety of offerings and the cultural importance of the botefuri, familiar figures in everyday life.

Their mode of operation also reflects the Edo economy. Many of them worked during the day. They borrowed their yoke, baskets, and initial capital from a wholesaler, bought their merchandise, and resold it before returning the advance with a modest interest. This flexible economy, open to those without skilled trades or land, made the botefuri a possible path to emancipation for many marginalized urban dwellers.

In addition, the visual and sonic creativity of botefuri underscores their indelible role in popular culture. Some resort to dramatic displays to attract attention. For example, a chili pepper seller displays a gigantic 1.8-meter papier-mâché chili pepper, intended to attract children and, through them, their mothers.

Others sing verses extolling the virtues of their products. Through their voices, their merchandise, and their salesmanship, the botefuri embody an economy that is both fragile and inventive, deeply rooted in the daily life and sound culture of the Tokugawa capital.

*Kinsei ryuko akindo kyoka ezu (Illustrated Comic Poems on Popular Modern Merchants) (Courtesy the National Diet Library)*

The Yobi-goe of the Streets of Edo Tokyo

Street shouting, or yobi-goe, constituted a true vocal art, embedded in the daily sounds of premodern Tokyo, the Tokugawa capital. The din of hooves, the pounding of artisans, the singing of shamisen, and the roar of fires all composed a dense acoustic landscape. Amid this hubbub, the voice of the botefuri stood out with its deliberately crafted timbre. Each vendor had to be heard from afar and recognized unambiguously, because the soundscape of Edo was defined less by architectural boundaries than by the range of these familiar and expected voices.

Yobi-goe, therefore, served as a signature. A tofu vendor, for example, would prolong the “to-fu-u-u” with a drawling, nasal intonation, while a grilled sweet potato seller would launch a warm “i-shi-ya-ki-imo” with a raspy, instantly recognizable timbre. These calls were not improvised; they were passed from one vendor to another, and sometimes even taught as a craft technique. The vocal performance of the botefuri required complete physical commitment. Some sold from dawn until nightfall, so maintaining a powerful and melodious yobi-goe for several hours required endurance comparable to that of kabuki theater singers.

This link between street shouting and artistic performance was also noted by scholars of the time, who saw in certain yobi-goe echoes of narrative chanting or Buddhist recitations. Thus, the botefuri's shout is not only a commercial signal, it is part of a sonic aesthetic that connects the sacred, art, and everyday life.

Nineteenth-century stories evoke the nostalgia aroused by certain calls, associated with the seasons or moments in life. Hearing the song of the morning glory (asagao) flower seller heralded summer, while that of the mandarin orange seller recalled winter. The Morisada Manko describes several of these calls and highlights their variety. In its pages, the vendors are not reduced to their merchandise, but embodied by their voices, vectors of collective emotions and memories. This emotional charge persists in contemporary Japan, certain street calls, such as those of the soybean seller or the ice cream vendor (often accompanied by pre-recorded music or loudspeakers), are still heard in older neighborhoods, evoking an immediate echo of familiarity and nostalgia.

Today, several museums are reproducing the voices of the botefuri to revive the soundscape of Edo. Ethnomusicology researchers are recording and analyzing the rare current vendors who perpetuate these calls. Yobi-goe is now studied as an intangible heritage, a witness to how city dwellers of the past lived and experienced their environment.

Ingenuity, Marginality and Transmission: The Social Role of the botefuri

The botefuri also embody a social phenomenon that reveals the tensions and adaptations of Japanese urban society during the Tokugawa era. Through their commercial ingenuity, their role in supporting the most vulnerable, and their place in a marginal economy, they represent an essential interface between the everyday and the exceptional, between the necessary and the superfluous.

The success of the botefuri lies above all in their ability to attract the eye and seduce the ear. In addition to their voices, some used theatrical staging to capture attention. This type of visual strategy is part of a long Japanese tradition of “street calling”, where spectacle was an integral part of the sale. Being a botefuri also meant belonging to a subsistence economy, made up of daily loans, tight margins, and uncertainty. Records from the Bunsei era (1818-1830) show that a vegetable vendor could earn an average of 580 mon per day, after repaying their loan (approximately 7,000 yen today). Although this sum was sufficient to live on, it did not guarantee stability.

While the botefuri gradually declined with the modernization of commerce in the 19th century, their legacy endures, and their inventiveness finds echoes in contemporary marketing. As several scholars have noted, regional mascots (yuru kyara) and chanted supermarket slogans are reminiscent of the art of yobi-goe. The attention economy, so central today, has its roots in the ingenuity of Edo street vendors.

Popular yet precarious, marginal yet indispensable figures, the botefuri embody both the fragility and creativity of Edo society. They reveal the many ways in which an expanding urban society invents solutions to reconcile survival, spectacle, and social connection. Their legacy testifies to the permanence of street arts as vectors of emotion, commerce, and cultural identity in Japan.

From Edo Streets to Contemporary Japan

Today, while the alleys of Tokyo no longer echo with the bustle of the botefuri, their legacy remains. It can be seen in the survival of certain products from their trade, such as shichimi (literally “seven-flavored chili”), still sold near temples and shrines. It can also be found in the world of Japanese marketing, where chanted slogans, regional mascots, and street performances recreate, in a different form, the art of attracting attention inherited from these street vendors. Their memory lives on in popular culture, whether in historical dramas, museum exhibitions, or festivals where we sometimes find vendors selling goldfish and amezaiku.

In a country where artisanal heritage and local traditions are valued as vectors of identity, the botefuri appear not as vanished figures, but as the ancestors of a still-living art: that of giving soul to everyday life through commerce and imagination.

About the Author: Sébastien is a writer and videographer living in Tokyo. Born in 1995 under the sun of Marseille in the South of France, he has been living in Japan since 2022. He has written for several international media outlets, mainly about Japan, art, and cinema. In his free time, he enjoys drinking coffee and taking 35mm photos.